


stumble on home

by nothingunrealistic



Series: our bodies could fall apart at any second [2]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Friendship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Pining, Romeo and Juliet References, Sufjan Stevens - Freeform, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 10:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13316040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingunrealistic/pseuds/nothingunrealistic
Summary: Two friends, true friends, on a perfect day. (Well. Something like that.)





	stumble on home

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to "someone to carry you" - and by "sequel", I mean that it starts less than fifteen minutes after "someone to carry you" ends. 
> 
> Content warnings: allusions to/discussions of suicide.
> 
> Fic title from "Gorgeous" by Taylor Swift.

Evan’s phone rings when he’s halfway up the Kleinmans’ front steps.

Evan starts at the sound — it’s been weeks, probably, since anyone called him first, and even longer since anyone called him while his phone wasn’t on vibrate, and it takes him a moment to recognize his own ringtone. He scrambles to neatly put down his stack of medical forms, his water bottle, and the overnight bag of stuff he grabbed from his house, all while his phone continues to blare.

Still standing on the welcome mat, Jared watches him fumble without making a move to take anything from him or to go inside. “What the crap is that ringtone?”

“I don’t know. It’s the default one.” Evan finally manages to pull out his phone. Given how much he dislikes phone conversations even on the best of days, he’s seriously considering just letting it ring until he reads the caller ID.

_Mom_

“Oh,” Evan says, looking at the screen.

“Oh?” Jared echoes as Evan swipes to accept the call. “What does ‘oh’ mean?”

“Shh.” Evan puts the phone to his ear, doing his best to hold it steady. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hey, honey.” His mom sounds tired but cheerful — about the same as usual. “Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine,” Evan says automatically, without really thinking about the question. He covers the lower part of his phone with his other hand to whisper to Jared, “It’s my mom.”

“I figured,” Jared stage whispers back.

“I saw you tried to call me earlier,” his mom says, and oh yeah, that was something he did today. It seems so long ago now. “I was in the middle of my shift, so I couldn’t answer, you know how it is, but I’m on break now, so. What’s up?”

“Um,” Evan begins, because so much has happened today, and when he reaches for the words to start to explain some part of it to her, they won’t come. They’re trapped somewhere in the back of his mind, like a raging river behind a dam, just like they were when he was trying to tell the ER doctor about falling. The longer they stay there and he stays silent, he knows, the more worried his mom will be. “I, um.”

“Evan, honey,” his mom says. She’s definitely worried already. “Is something wrong?”

“Um,” Evan says again, and he’s repeating himself but the alternative is waiting until the dam breaks and all the words come flooding out, which is the last thing he wants. “I just —”

And suddenly Jared is snapping his fingers in front of Evan’s face and holding out one hand. “Just give me the phone.”

“What?” Evan says, but he’s already handing it over.

“Hi, Heidi,” Jared says brightly into the phone. For some reason, Evan’s mom has always liked Jared, and didn’t even mind when he started calling her by her first name when they were in seventh grade. “It’s Jared. I’m with Evan.” A pause. “I just don’t think he’s in the mood for a phone conversation at the moment, is all.” Another pause. “Oh, yeah. About that.”

“What’s she saying?” Evan whispers, almost a hiss. Jared’s gaze flicks to Evan, then back somewhere into the distance. Will he ever get to hear both sides of a conversation Jared is having about him?

“There was an incident at work,” Jared says at last. Water is rushing behind the dam, but Evan can’t tell if the level is rising or falling. “Evan had a fall and broke his arm, which is when he tried to call you. After that didn’t work, he, uh, managed to get in touch with me, and I took him to the ER, and he’s all patched up and everything. Practically in one piece.”

Evan’s fully hissing when he says, “What is going _on,”_ and if the way Jared is holding Evan’s phone away from his ear and wincing is any indication, he’s not the only Hansen who wants to know.

“I asked him the same thing, believe me,” Jared says, after whatever haranguing was happening on the other end of the line has finished. “But obviously it turned out not to be an issue.” He listens for a moment. “We’re at my house, since he mentioned you were still at work. My parents will be fine with him staying the night.” A few more moments. “We have some soup. Very wholesome.” Jared nods, as if Evan’s mom will be able to see him, then says, “Yeah, I think so,” and holds Evan’s phone back out to him. “You’re on.”

Evan takes it and holds it gingerly to his ear. “Hey, Mom. Sorry about that, Jared took my phone…”

“Oh, Evan, Jared told me everything,” his mom says, and even though he’s heard every word Jared said to her, he can’t help feeling a spike of fear at that. “A broken arm… are you sure you’re really okay?”

“I’m fine, I promise,” Evan says. He can tell that Jared is staring at him again, arms crossed, so he keeps his eyes on the Kleinmans’ front door. “I mean, as much as I can be with my arm, but. I just wasn’t sure how to explain it to you, is all.”

Her voice softens. “I’m glad you have Jared with you, sweetheart. I wouldn’t want you to have to be alone after something like that, and since I won’t get off work for a while…”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

Something beeps loudly in the background at the other end of the line. “Sounds like that’s the end of my break. I have to go, but we can talk more later. Thank Jared for me. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Evan says. He’s barely hung up and stowed his phone away when Jared says, “You’re really not a good liar, you know.”

Considering the number of lies he’s told today, and the fraction of them that Jared knows the truth about (the majority), that’s not reassuring. “When did I lie during that?”

Jared raises an eyebrow. “‘I just wasn’t sure how to explain it to you’? Really?”

“Well, you told my mom that I called you. That was definitely a lie.”

“No, I told her you got in touch with me.” Jared stops glaring and starts fishing around in his pockets for his keys, which Evan takes as his cue to pick up his pile of stuff and climb the rest of the steps. “Having a face-to-face conversation counts as getting in touch.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I do, and she asked me, not you.”

Is he serious? “I mean, she could’ve asked me. If you’d put her on speaker, so that I could, you know, hear her.”

A put-upon sigh. “I don’t know how to turn on the speakerphone on your weird phone, and I didn’t exactly have time to figure it out.”

“You didn’t have to take my phone in the first place.”

“You gave me your phone.”

“Under pressure from you!”

“Hey, I was just trying to help,” Jared says. He unlocks the door and flings it open probably more dramatically than is really necessary. “Don’t try to tell me you were doing just fine, because I won’t believe you. I’m not your mom.”

It really isn’t fair that Jared knows Evan so well when Evan so often feels that he barely knows Jared at all. Especially today. “No shit,” he mutters, stepping over the threshold.

“You know your way around, of course,” Jared says, shutting the door behind them. “Get a drink or whatever if you want. Mi casa es si casa.”

“It's ‘su,’ actually,” Evan says. “Mi casa es su casa.”

“Right. Possessives.”

“And, technically,” Evan continues, feeling weirdly daring, “I think ‘tu casa’ would make more sense, since that’s, it’s the informal form. If we’re friends and all.”

Even after everything they said in the car, Evan half expects Jared to correct him. But Jared just says, “Yes, I get it, you’re the Spanish genius and I should listen to you, mi casa es tu casa,” and sweeps ahead of Evan into the kitchen.

Evan enters a little more slowly. “Where should I put my stuff?”

“Just dump it on a chair,” Jared answers loudly from the kitchen. “Or the table. Any flat surface, really.” Evan notices as he enters that Jared’s shoes are off now. It’s an odd contrast to the dress clothes he’s still in. “First things first, food.”

“I’m not really that hungry.” The kitchen table, fairly close to the doorway, ends up as the recipient of Evan’s things.

“When’d you eat last?”

“Um.” Sitting down and unlacing his boots gives Evan a reason not to look at Jared when he says, “Some time today.” He’s fairly sure it was today, anyway.

“Well, you need to eat, and your mom made me promise to feed you.” The clanking noises behind Evan must be Jared getting out a pot or pan. “I’m not interested in being the target of Heidi Hansen’s maternal wrath. Again.”

“Me neither,” Evan says. He wouldn’t normally think of his mom as capable of wrath, but if she was yelling on the phone with Jared as loudly as it seemed, maybe it is possible. At least now he knows more about what she actually said. “You mentioned something about soup, right?”

“Chicken soup,” Jared says. “Unexotic, but antibiotic.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Irrelevant.” A cabinet door slams shut. “None of that canned crap, either. Kleinman family recipe, courtesy of Dad.”

“That’s cool.” Now that Jared mentions his dad, Evan’s reminded that no adults are actually in the house. “Where are your parents? I mean, I know you said they were out of town…”

“At some art show a couple hours away. Mom’s got a piece in it and she wants to meet the other artists.” Jared’s stopped working on dinner preparations. “It’s tomorrow, and they probably won’t be back until the day after, so. Empty house.” He sounds less excited about that idea than Evan would have expected. When Evan’s pulled off his boots and gotten up to drop them somewhere else, he finally sees that Jared is leaning on the kitchen island, looking lost.

He should lighten the mood somehow, but that’s Jared’s specialty, not his.

“Throw a party,” Evan says. “A kegger.” It’s obviously a stupid idea, but Jared smiles briefly at the suggestion.

“Excellent plan.” Jared pushes off of the counter with both hands. “Two people and seven functioning limbs among them. Sounds like my idea of a great time.”

“Seven and a half.”

“In any case, if this is going to be a party, we need music.” Evan watches as Jared pulls his phone out to plug it into a portable speaker that’s sitting on the island, then scrolls through Spotify and presses play on something with a flourish. “Perfect.”

There’s a quiet creaking sound, and then a lively burst of piano. It’s vaguely familiar, but Evan can’t remember the artist until the vocals come in, familiar from hours of exposure to Jared’s music library. “Is this Sufjan Stevens?”

“The one and only.” Jared’s rummaging around in the fridge now, and his voice is muffled. “You’re learning.”

“I bet this is exactly what they play at keggers.”

“For sure.” With a triumphant noise, Jared emerges with a jar of soup, nudging the fridge door shut with one foot. “I mean, this could be a kegger, considering my parents haven’t used their liquor cabinet in years, but somehow I don’t think alcohol plays nicely with pain medication. Do you need any more of that, by the way? We have Tylenol somewhere.”

“No, it’s not too bad right now.” Once he’d actually been given some pills and had his arm snapped back into place, the pain there had mostly subsided, and the soreness all over from hitting the ground had faded. “Also, I don’t think you’re supposed to mix pain medications like that, because they might interact badly, or you could overdose.”

“And that’s terrible,” Jared says absentmindedly, pouring the entire jar of soup into the large pot on the stove. Surely it’ll be too much for the two of them to eat.

“Can I help?”

“It’s soup.” That doesn’t clarify anything. “Get a wooden spoon from that drawer.”

Evan goes to the drawer in question and sifts through serving spoons, tongs, cooking implements he doesn’t recognize, and strangely, a calculator before finding a wooden spoon. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

They wait for the soup to heat up for several minutes, Jared standing at the stove and alternating between stirring and checking his phone, Evan waiting by the counter and taking in all the half-remembered details of the Kleinmans’ kitchen. The last time he’d come to Jared’s house, for a Spanish project, they’d gone straight up to his room to work. And after that, at Jared’s suggestion they’d each worked on it online instead, at their own houses.

A new song starts, the bare guitar and piano a stark contrast to the lush strings of the last track. Jared grimaces, and Sufjan only gets as far as something about a swing set before Jared’s left his place at the stove and skipped the song. “Never liked that one.”

“Why not?”

Jared’s studying his phone screen with a slight frown. “It’s, well, it’s about a serial killer. Creepy as shit, honestly.”

“It didn’t sound like it was about that to me.”

“Yeah, because I skipped it before he got to the murder part.”

More waiting. The soup gets hot enough that Jared has to take off his glasses more than once to wipe away the steam condensing on them. Evan checks his phone a few times, but he doesn’t follow many people on Twitter or Instagram, and there’s no new messages from his mom or anyone else.

“Did you get a haircut?”

Evan glances up at Jared, now half turned toward him and away from the burners, one hand still halfheartedly moving the wooden spoon around the pot of soup. “What?”

“Your hair looks…” Jared gestures with his free hand, as if trying to figure out how to express what’s changed, then gives up. “…smaller. Did you get it cut?”

“Yeah. A few weeks ago.” He’d gotten tired of seeing the same face in the mirror every single morning, had wanted something, anything to change. That had seemed like the easiest option. “Why?”

Jared shrugs. “Just noticed. Figured as your gracious host I should try to make conversation.”

“Well, I — you just noticed?”

“…Yes? I mean, the lighting makes it more obvious.” Evan looks where Jared’s pointing, at the stained glass lamp hanging from the kitchen ceiling. “Like some kind of —”

“But it took you, you needed four hours to notice? I mean, you practically had your hands in my hair, in your car.” The feeling of Jared’s hand brushing leaves from his hair, and touching (stroking?) his face, both with unexpected gentleness, has kept intermittently popping into his thoughts ever since they left the Ellison parking lot. “I thought you would have seen then…”

“Hey, I’ve been pretty distracted,” Jared says, gesturing with the spoon for emphasis and swearing when droplets of chicken broth fly off and spatter the kitchen floor. “The state of your hair wasn’t my top priority. Also, my hands weren’t _in_ your hair, that’s a shameless exaggeration.”

“If you say so.”

“Anyway,” and now Jared has refocused on the stove, “it suits you. In case you were wondering.”

“Oh.” Evan doesn’t know what to say to that, or why Jared would say it in the first place. “Thank you.”

He anticipates a mock-haughty “you’re welcome,” but there’s nothing. The song playing is one Evan specifically recognizes but can’t remember the name of, about growing and freedom and making mistakes, and he quietly hums along to the rest of it to occupy the unexpected silence.

“This is basically ready,” Jared says suddenly, interrupting Sufjan in the middle of a phrase. “There’s a ladle in the same drawer and bowls and spoons nearby.”

The ladle is easy enough to find. Hunting down the bowls and spoons takes more poking around in neighboring cabinets and drawers, but Evan unearths two of each before Jared can get too impatient and hands them over. “These bowls?”

“Yeah, those’ll work.” Jared ladles out soup for both of them. “You’re the guest, table or counter?”

“Uh… counter?”

“Good choice, very convenient.”

Almost as soon as Jared deposits the bowls on the island, there’s a jangling noise from somewhere on the floor, and Jared’s cat leaps up onto the countertop, narrowly avoiding spilling Evan’s soup everywhere.

“Hey, no, Spag,” Jared chides, approaching Spaghetti with arms outstretched to pick her up. “We’re eating dinner here. You wouldn’t like it if I came running through while you were eating, would you?” His voice has gone up like it usually does when he’s talking to his cat, the same way most people talk to babies. Evan’s always thought it was sweet.

Spaghetti mews at Jared before walking to the edge of the counter and jumping into his arms. He makes an “oof!” sound like she’s winded him.

“Clever girl,” Jared coos before turning to Evan, holding Spaghetti out toward him a bit. “You wanna say hi?”

Evan tentatively reaches out and strokes the top of Spaghetti’s head, between her ears. Spaghetti purrs and settles in Jared’s arms, closing her eyes, so he must be doing something right.

Then he scratches the upper part of her chest, and she meows loudly and nips at his fingers. Evan yelps and snatches his hand away.

“Be nice, Spag,” Jared says, clearly trying to stifle laughter at Evan’s plight as he carries Spaghetti into another room. “Evan is a friend, not a snack.” He says it so casually, like Evan being Jared’s friend without any qualifications is a known fact and not a recent revelation.

Jared returns soon afterward, catless. “Okay. Do you have any flesh wounds, or can we go ahead and eat?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Excellent.” Jared drags two stools out from under the counter and swings one around to Evan’s side. “Soup’s on.”

Even with his palm now squarely in the middle of his face, Evan can tell that Jared is pointing at him and grinning. “Seriously?”

“Hey, it was a perfect opportunity.”

“Sure.”

Fortunately, the soup is actually good, hot and flavorful and with the ideal ratio of broth to solid ingredients. They don’t talk at all initially, just eating and letting the music fill the kitchen.

“So what exactly does apprentice park ranging entail?”

The question is so abrupt and unexpected after the stretch of time without conversation that it takes Evan a few seconds to realize that Jared’s asked it. “What?”

“What do you do at your job?”

“Oh. Um.” Evan taps his fingers on the counter. “It isn’t, it’s really not that interesting, honestly.”

“Do you think I would ask if I wasn’t interested?” Jared says, rolling his eyes but not sounding particularly annoyed.

“You might ask just to be nice.”

“Right. Because if there’s one word that describes me, it’s ‘nice.’”

Evan shrugs. “I mean, sometimes…”

“Are you going to tell me about it, then?” Jared asks before scooping up some more soup.

“Sure.” What would Jared actually want to know? “It’s mostly about monitoring the park to keep it in good condition. So, like, sometimes I’ll walk on one of the hiking trails to make sure, to see if there’s a dead tree in the way or it’s overgrown or there’s a sign missing. People steal them sometimes.”

“Wow, dick move.”

“Yeah, and they’re expensive to replace.” Evan takes another bite to give him more time to think. “I also have to patrol all the sports fields and the pavilions to make sure they’re not vandalized or littered on, since there’s no trash cans in the park.”

“Oh, that sounds like brilliant planning. Don’t put trash cans in a public place where hundreds of people go to have picnics and walk their dogs. What could go wrong?”

“I think they just don’t want to pay for trash removal.”

“Typical,” Jared mutters, equally cynical. “So where do trees come in?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you know stuff about trees now. How does forest expertise factor into replacing trail markers and picking up trash?”

He actually remembered that?

“I mean, it doesn’t, really,” Evan says. “But how it happened was, since I’m an apprentice park ranger, for a while I was paired up with a senior ranger, to be a mentor to me, right?” Jared nods and motions for Evan to continue. “And my mentor, she studied forestry. So while she was training me, she also told me a lot about the trees in the park. How to recognize different species, how long they live, that sort of thing. And also about the history of the park, but that’s not a tree thing, it’s just in case I ever have to give a tour.” She’d also reassured him that he wasn’t likely to have to lead a tour any time soon, if ever, but it was still an unsettling prospect.

“Neat.” The single word carries no sarcasm that Evan can hear. “Got any interesting tree facts to share, then? Or interesting park history facts?”

Evan searches his memory. “There’s an old rose garden in the park somewhere. Kind of near one of the trails. I haven’t actually seen it, but my mentor said it’s really beautiful? She and her wife got married there.”

“A rose garden?” Jared repeats disbelievingly. “In the middle of a state park?”

“Well, it’s not in the middle, but yes. It was built a long time ago, and at some point the people running the park just kind of abandoned it.”

“What would they do that for?”

“I don’t know.” Evan’s bowl is empty, but oddly enough he’s actually hungry now. He gets up and returns to the pot of soup. “It was just too much upkeep, I guess. Too demanding.”

“That sucks.” Jared’s quiet while Evan fills his bowl halfway. “Those wedding pictures are probably full of Japanese beetles.”

“Japanese beetles?”

“They eat roses.” The unspoken “duh” is clear.

“How do you even know that?”

Jared raises his hands in feigned defensiveness. Luckily, he isn’t holding his spoon, or it likely would have been flung across the kitchen. “Hey, I’m capable of being well-rounded.”

“Right.” Evan returns to his seat, bowl in hand. “So how’s your, what have you been doing this summer?”

“Oh, me?” Jared sits up a little taller, shoulders back. “I also have a job this summer. Paid computer science position with RIT. Tim Cook had better watch out.”

That explains the dress clothes. “Uh, not that I don’t believe you, but how the hell did you get a paying job at a college?”

“Well, it’s not exactly at the college,” Jared amends. “They’re working with a communications company…” He launches into a convoluted explanation about infrastructure and first responders and connectivity. Somehow it’s engaging, despite Evan not understanding all of it. “…And to get that done, they decided to get a professor and a bunch of grad students — and me, of course — and throw us all in an office in their building with some computers. Because letting us work on campus would just be too hard for them.”

“Must be.” Jared hasn’t said where exactly this company is located, but Evan does know where the RIT campus is. And he knows that it and Ellison Park are on completely opposite sides of their town.

One different choice by that company and Jared would have never come near the park at all.

“…So I avoid them, they avoid me, it all works out pretty well,” Jared says, and Evan realizes he’s missed a piece of the conversation. “Dream team of one.”

“Huh,” Evan says, scrambling for a further response to cover up that he just spaced out. “Do you actually know anything about them? The, uh, the, the grad students?”

Jared ponders the question. “I’m pretty sure one of them is named Mike.”

“You don’t even try to keep their names straight?”

“I don’t do anything straight,” Jared says reflexively, and then half a second later his shoulders go stiff and he says something under his breath that sounds a lot like “fuck.”

Overall, it’s a baffling response. “You don’t… what?”

“Nothing. Stupid joke. Forget I said anything.” The spoon in Jared’s hand rattles against the side of his bowl. “It doesn’t matter.”

Evan turns the sentence over in his mind. _I don’t do anything straight._ He remembers how Jared had chosen to pretend they were dating in order to get him treated faster, and how he’d sarcastically apologized to Evan for the “affront to your heterosexuality” for doing it. (Kind of an ironic statement when he thinks about it, but he’s not really thinking about it.) And he wonders.

“Jared,” he begins, and regrets it when he sees Jared’s grip tighten on the spoon, no longer in motion, but he goes on anyway. “Um, obviously you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but…”

“I’m pretty sure not answering would be an answer,” Jared says, swiveling to face Evan fully. “So I’ll save you the trouble of asking. Yes, I’m gay.” He sounds confident, almost defiant, but he won’t quite look at Evan. “Don’t make it weird.”

“Why would I make it weird?”

“I don’t claim to understand why heterosexuals do the things they do.”

“…Do your parents know?”

“No, and that’s exactly the kind of thing I meant when I said ‘don’t make it weird,’” Jared snaps. “Excuse me.”

And he gets up and walks out of the kitchen, leaving the soup simmering on the stove and Evan sitting alone at the island, where music is still playing on Jared’s phone, the wordless sound of slowly descending horns.

So.

Jared is gay. Evan didn’t know that, or guess it before now, although he’s wondered _what if, just maybe, it could happen_ once or twice. But the more that he thinks about it — about how Jared hasn’t dated or really even talked about any girls since his first girlfriend broke up with him in eighth grade, about how he goes on indignant rants to Evan after hearing their classmates making homophobic jokes, about a hundred small nameless moments — the more it makes sense. Not that it has to make sense or anything, he knows that, but it does.

And Jared didn’t want to tell him, because he thinks Evan is straight. That also kind of makes sense. Even if — even though — it’s not true. Which Jared probably deserves to know.

If he would even listen.

When Jared comes back, maybe a minute and a half later, Evan’s still sitting at the island, swirling his own spoon through the broth left at the bottom of his bowl to the rhythm of the song playing without really hearing it.

“Sorry about that,” Jared says. His glasses are slightly askew.

“It’s fine.”

“Technical difficulties, so to speak. Anyway.”

This is as good a time as any. “Jared, I think you should know —” Jared sighs loudly and slumps forward, bracing his forearms against the counter. “I’m not, um, I’m not actually…”

“Not like all those _other_ straight people? Spare me, please.”

“I’m not straight at all,” Evan says, and Jared’s head snaps up so quickly Evan’s worried he’ll give himself whiplash. “I’m… bi, probably? So, you know, no heterosexuality to be affronted here.” Hopefully echoing Jared’s own words back to him will put him at ease, rather than making him think it’s a joke.

For a moment, Jared just stares at him, expression frozen. Evan is reminded, somehow, of that spinning rainbow wheel that the cursor on Jared’s laptop turns into whenever it’s too busy processing something to actually respond. The beach ball in death, Jared had called it.

Then Jared’s whole face shifts, suddenly surprised and open and oddly young. That’s kind of a weird thing to think, maybe, since they’re both seventeen and seventeen isn’t old, but Evan hasn’t seen him look like that since they were fourteen at most.

“Oh,” Jared says, finally, softly. “That’s… that’s great. Really.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice has regained its usual tone, but his face hasn’t changed. “Apologies for calling you straight before. If you want to sue me for slander, I’ll totally understand.”

It’s such a perfectly Jared thing to say, and such a relief to hear, that Evan bursts out laughing entirely involuntarily. Jared grins, a partly incredulous, partly delighted expression of _I can’t believe that joke actually landed._

Maybe, Evan thinks, he knows Jared better than he realized.

They finish eating their soup, although Jared complains about his having gone cold. He offers to take Evan’s bowl and spoon for him along with his own, then promptly leaves them in the sink.

“Shouldn’t you wash those?”

“I’ll get around to it.” Jared pauses the music and heads into the living room; Evan slides off his stool and follows. “What do you want to watch?”

“Anything’s fine, I guess,” Evan says. One wall of the living room is taken up by a long, high-backed couch; when he sits down, it’s just as soft as he remembers. “As long as it’s not, like, something really gory.”

“Well, I promised you bad movies, and I intend to deliver.” Jared starts rifling through a stack of DVDs on the TV stand while Evan observes from the couch. “Hmm… _Howard the Duck?”_

“Doesn’t sound that interesting.”

“It’s not. _The Last Airbender?”_

“You saw that when it came out, right?”

Jared sighs. “Unfortunately. My expectations would be much lower this time.”

“Maybe something else.”

More restacking of DVD cases. “How about _Plan 9 from Outer Space?”_

“Is that even real?”

“Or maybe _The Room —_  actually, let’s just watch _MythBusters,_ it’s guaranteed to be good.”

Jared puts a disc into the DVD player and flicks through multiple episode selection screens, seemingly looking for something specific, before picking one. The “do not try this at home” warning plays as he walks away from the TV and drops onto the couch beside Evan, followed by the episode introduction, talking about salsa and a cement truck and the biggest explosion in the show’s history.

“This is a classic.” Jared leans back, hands folded behind his head. If there were a coffee table in front of them, Evan thinks Jared would be propping his feet up on it. “Two good myths, one fantastic boom.”

“It’s weird that they say it at the very beginning. Just giving away the ending like that, like, by the way, we’re going to blow up something big eventually.”

“That’s how you keep people watching and keep raking in that sweet, sweet advertising money,” Jared explains. “Build up to it from the beginning, so when the explosion does come it’ll be more rewarding.”

“Like _Romeo and Juliet.”_

Evan only realizes that he’s spoken aloud when Jared says, “Wow, I must have missed the part of that play where they blow up a concrete mixer.”

“Obviously that wasn’t the point.”

“Then I don’t see the connection.”

“It’s like…” On screen, several explosions happen in quick succession. “In the prologue, before the actual play starts, there’s that person who comes on and tells everyone about the two families and the lovers and what happens to them.” How they die. “So you know the whole time you’re reading it how it’ll end, but you don’t know how it’ll get there.”

“Huh.” Jared considers this for a moment. “I didn’t realize that was part of the story.”

“Didn’t you read it last year? When it was required for English class?” They were in the same English class sophomore year, so Evan knows it was assigned to both of them.

“I read it, sure, but the only memorable part was Mercutio.” Jared unwinds his arms to start counting on his fingers, narrowly avoiding whacking Evan in the face in the process. “He was the funniest and objectively best character, he was definitely gay, and everything went to shit after Shakespeare got rid of him way too early.”

“Mercutio was gay?”

Jared scoffs. “He got involved in inter-family drama that had nothing to do with him because he cared way too much about one guy who was involved, and he got screwed over as a result. That’s a textbook gay maneuver.”

“I don’t think that was in the annotations.”

“Believe me, the annotations are useless when it comes to this kind of stuff.”

The MythBusters are discussing how to transport the cement truck they’re using for testing. Jared and Evan sit back and watch them examine the inside of the barrel and start filling it with cement, and share a glance when the narrator points out that no one’s noticed too much is being added, without any further discussion.

The episode switches over to the other myth, about dissolving prison bars in salsa, and it’s somewhere around the discussion of all the different kinds of bars being used that Evan starts to yawn. Not that it’s not an interesting experiment, but it’s been a long day, and the cushiness of the couch certainly isn’t keeping him awake. Several times he starts to tip to one side or the other and has to jerk himself upright and alert again.

It’s not until he feels one such fall come to an unexpected stop and hears a quiet cough from right next to him that he registers he’s listed so far over that his head has landed on Jared’s shoulder. Which is surprisingly comfortable. For him, anyway, if not for Jared.

“Is this, uh…” Evan mumbles, not sure what he’s asking.

Jared doesn’t push him off. “Just watch the show. Or don’t, I guess.”

Of the two options, “don’t” appeals to Evan far more. The last part of the episode he remembers, from what he can take in with both eyes closed and one ear muffled by being pressed against Jared, is one of the MythBusters warning viewers not to handle large amounts of electricity as casually as he’s doing.

* * *

He’s high up, he’s sure of that. It’s a warm day — the sun unblocked by clouds, the wind light and sporadic — but he’s still shivering, chilled to the bone.

His arms are straining. The bark is rough on his hands. He’s hanging, like the moment, in the balance.

And then he’s falling, the wind suddenly shrieking in his ears, branches whipping against his legs, until he’s not.

An all-over thud, a loud crack like a branch breaking, and everything goes still and quiet and painful.

He cries, and he swears. He yells for his mom, for anyone, _please, please find me, please hear me,_ and he cries some more, and no one responds. He waits, and he waits, until the sun has sunk behind the trees, and still no one comes.

Somehow he gets to his feet and gets away from there, staggering into a tiny office begging for help. He’s pelted with questions he can’t answer, _how, why, when, why not, what then, did you, have you,_ and he wonders _what if I did tell the truth._

He tells himself _if I could just explain it, maybe everyone would understand,_ and his own mind shrieks back at him, far louder than the wind, _they’ll hate you, right back where you started, nobody, nothing, alone, everyone will hate you!_

Evan wakes up in the dark, shaking and breathing hard, with his arm throbbing.

It’s silent around him, and when he says, “Hello?” out loud, there’s no response. He’s alone.

“Help,” he pleads to the total emptiness around him, and his words are shaking too. “Someone, please,” just like in his dream, and just like, he finally remembers, he had shouted for help after failing to reach his mom, screamed until his voice gave out. He hadn't been able to make another sound for several long minutes, not until —

Until Jared had arrived.

Jared had been there. Jared had been here, was here still, surely.

Or maybe that was the dream, and this was what was real.

“Jared?” Evan calls out, despite his increasing certainty that Jared won’t hear him. “Jared, where are you, come back…”

No answer.

“Jared? Please!”

Light suddenly floods the room, and Evan has to blink a few times before he can clearly see Jared standing in the entryway, one hand on the wall switch.

“Jesus, Evan,” Jared says, striding across the living room — that's where Evan is, he sees now, lying on the Kleinmans’ couch, with a blanket he doesn’t recognize draped over him. “Are you okay? You sounded like you were being mur- attacked.” He draws closer and frowns as he studies Evan’s face. “And you look like it, too.”

“Yeah, I’m… I’m okay.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Evan pulls himself to a seated position, fiddling with the edge of the blanket. It’s soft, fleecy. “I didn’t really think you would.”

The couch cushion beneath Evan dips slightly as Jared sits down next to him. “So what’s the issue?”

“It’s… it’s nothing, really, it’s stupid, I’m just being stupid —”

“No, you’re not,” Jared interrupts. “And it’s clearly not nothing. You can talk about it. Judgment-free zone here.”

Breathe in. Breathe out. “It was a, I had a bad dream, about. About falling.”

“Okay.”

“I was up in the tree again. High up. Just hanging onto one branch.” The words are sticking again; it’s a struggle to pull them loose. “And then… well, then I…”

“You know, you don’t have to tell me about it,” Jared says. “If you don’t want to.” And he sounds so sincere, so understanding, almost kind.

Abruptly, paradoxically, the dam breaks.

“I let go,” Evan spits out, the not-quite-confession practically wrenched from him. “I just, I was so alone, and I was always tired, I wanted it to stop, but when I landed everything just hurt more, it hurt so much —”

“Hey, slow down,” Jared urges, but now that Evan’s started, he couldn’t stop if he tried.

“And, and in the dream, you weren’t there, you didn’t find me, no one did, so I had to get out by myself.” Breathe in. Breathe in. Breathe in. “They were asking me all these questions about what happened, and I was sure if I told them, if I tell anyone about what I did, they’ll hate me —”

“Evan, _stop.”_

The words land with decisive firmness, totally unlike the hand that Jared’s just cautiously placed on his shoulder, and the two combined bring Evan back to himself just enough to realize that his ears have started to ring and his cheeks are wet.

“Breathe a little or you’ll pass out,” Jared says. “I’m going to get your water.”

He gets up and walks past Evan, who closes his eyes, head in his hands, and tries to focus on breathing. There’s not even time for Evan to start wildly fearing that Jared has simply left before he’s returned, sinking onto the couch again and handing Evan his water bottle, still half full.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Despite Evan’s trembling hands, and one hand being out of commission, the cap comes off without a struggle — Jared must have mostly unscrewed it for him.

“You told me about what happened,” Jared points out, when Evan has paused in chugging water and is no longer on the brink of hyperventilation. “How you felt. And I don’t hate you. I don’t think I even could. It would be like, I don’t know, destroying entropy.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It’s impossible, is the point. Never hated you, never will.”

A week ago, Evan wouldn’t have known whether or not to believe him. “Other people aren’t you.”

“Listen.” Jared slides toward Evan on the couch, nudging the blanket out of his way. “If someone thinks less of you for being honest about how you broke your arm? Then they’re a piece of shit. And I will be more than happy to call them a piece of shit personally, to their face.”

Evan huffs a quiet, half hearted laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Don’t you forget it.”

“I didn’t think you’d… I thought you wouldn’t understand.”

“That’s because I don’t, honestly,” Jared says, and then tilts his head to one side, visibly reconsidering. “Well. I don’t really tell my parents anything, and my coworkers don’t want to talk to me, and no one’s exactly blowing up my phone. So I get the loneliness thing.” He pushes his glasses up. Evan hadn’t noticed them sliding down before. “And, I mean, the whole get up, go to work, fuck around with code for hours, come home routine does feel like a waste of time sometimes…”

Instead of explaining further, Jared comes to a halt, the downcast expression that had started to form on his face carefully wiped away. “But. We’re not here to talk about my problems.”

As if Evan needed reminding of what they were talking about. “I did bring it up, though.”

“That you did.”

“Anyway, what I meant was.” He shouldn’t ask this. “Do you also, did you ever feel like…” He definitely shouldn’t ask this. “…Like I did? Like you didn’t want to be here anymore?”

Jared doesn’t say a word in response. Though they’re still sitting side by side, he’s angled himself toward Evan, who can therefore see that Jared’s biting his lip and realizes with horror that he looks like he’s on the verge of tears. Evan hasn’t even fully stopped crying yet himself.

He’s about to start pouring out apologies, though he hardly ever apologizes to Jared for anything, when Jared bends forward and wraps his arms around Evan, pulling him close into a tight, unrestrained hug, the way he used to nearly every day before they started high school. Before Jared began to drift away from Evan without ever explaining why. He’d almost forgotten how it felt.

Evan leans into Jared, all too ready to cling to solid proof that this moment, this connection, is real, and soon enough they’re crying in each other’s arms for the second time in one night, their mingled sobs echoing in the empty, too-big house.

They might have stayed like that indefinitely, if Jared hadn’t changed his position just enough to bump Evan’s splinted arm to one side. It’s a light touch, but it’s sufficient to cause an unexpected jolt of pain.

“Ow, fuck,” Evan says, wriggling out of Jared’s arms as best as he can without jostling his arm further. “Jared, you’re hurting my —”

“Crap, my bad.” Jared lets go and sits back, wiping his eyes with one hand. “Better?”

Evan bites the inside of his cheek. “That Tylenol you mentioned sounds really good right now.”

“One step ahead of you.” Jared pulls a bottle of Tylenol Extra Strength out of his pocket and starts undoing the cap. Once two capsules land in Evan’s gratefully outstretched hand, he downs them with the last of the water and rests his head on the back of the couch, closing his eyes.

“We should call it a night,” Jared says. “You’re clearly exhausted. Come on.”

Evan can’t exactly argue with that. “Sure. Where are we…”

“My room, I figure.” Jared stands and offers Evan a hand to pull him up off the couch. “I’ll get a sleeping bag.”

Evan gets to his feet and follows Jared through the living room into the kitchen. “Could you get my bag? It has all my overnight stuff in it.”

“What am I, your valet?” Jared asks, picking up the bag as requested and slinging one strap over his shoulder as he enters the main hallway.

They climb the stairs, Jared looking back a few times as they go, and arrive at the second floor, a single short hallway with a handful of doors lining the walls. Jared stops in front of a door that, if Evan remembers correctly, leads to a bathroom, and holds out his bag. “I’ll get the room set up while you brush your teeth and everything. You do have a toothbrush, right?”

“Yeah, of course.” Evan takes his bag. “Don’t you need to brush your teeth too?”

“Already did while you were sleeping,” Jared says, heading down the hall toward his room.

Evan watches him go for a moment, then enters the bathroom and turns on the lights. The sink, floor tiles, and bathtub/shower combination are all the same light purple, with the shower curtain and bath mat in a darker shade. The coordination is kind of striking — all the bathrooms at his house are just plain white.

Brushing his teeth turns out to be easier than he’d expected, since his left hand is still capable of holding a toothbrush steady while he adds toothpaste. Switching from his uniform pants to pajama pants isn’t too hard either, and fortunately he grabbed a pair that didn’t have a drawstring.

It’s when he tries to take off his uniform shirt that he runs into a problem. The problem being that although it’s possible to undo buttons one-handed, even if it takes him a solid two minutes to get them all, it’s not possible to actually get out of the shirt one-handed. Maybe if it were another shirt, or another day, he’d be able to pull it off. But this particular one has always been a little too small for him, and every time he tries to get the left sleeve off it tugs at his splint and sends another pang through his arm, and after hours on end of trying to do everything with only one hand, of gritted teeth and clenched fists, this one thing is frustrating enough that he could cry, which he’s already done too much of today.

Of course, he’s also asked for Jared’s assistance too much today, but at least that’s not guaranteed to end in tears.

Evan opens the bathroom door a crack and calls down the hall. “Hey, Jared?”

“What is it?” Jared calls back from behind the closed bedroom door.

“I kind of need your help.”

“Kind of?” Jared emerges from his room. He’s changed too, into an I Love New York T-shirt and cozy-looking gray pants, but his glasses are still on. “Make up your mind, do you need my help or…”

He trails off as he approaches and opens the bathroom door wider, blinking several times before finishing the sentence with “…or not?”

Something about the squeakiness with which those two words come out, combined with how Jared’s eyes flick down once or twice from Evan’s face to a point about a foot below, finally tips Evan off to the fact that his shirt is unbuttoned and partly off with nothing underneath and that he’s asked Jared in here to help him remove it fully. And that he hasn’t even explained that that’s the reason yet.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I just thought, I needed help with getting this off,” he rambles, indicating pretty much his entire torso with his good hand. “But I didn’t think, obviously I shouldn’t have, I can get it myself, you don’t have to —”

“No, it’s, uh, it’s fine,” Jared says. His hand is gripping the doorframe of the bathroom rather tightly. “Here, I’ll just…” He lets go of the doorframe to remove his glasses and sets them on the counter. “There. Consider your modesty preserved.”

“Don’t you need those to see?”

“I need them to see _clearly._ Seeing clearly probably won’t be necessary for this.” Jared runs a hand through his hair. “Now what exactly do you need me to do?”

“Pull this off, I guess.” Evan points to the shirt, even though Jared probably already knows which piece of clothing he means. “It’s kind of hard with one hand, and the sleeves…”

“I can imagine.” After a moment of thought, Jared makes a rather imperious twirling motion with one hand. “Spin around, it’ll be easier that way.”

“Sure.”

Evan turns his back to Jared and waits, breathing shallowly. He can feel Jared carefully sliding the right sleeve off of his arm, then doing the same on the left side, maneuvering the sleeve around his splint without it catching, all with that same surprising gentleness. “Here you go. I assume you have another shirt to put on?”

“Yeah, of course.” Evan turns around to grab the shirt from Jared, then shoves it in his bag and starts looking for his pajama top. The tapping of Jared’s foot on the tiles as he stands waiting, arms folded and bare eyes firmly on the opposite wall, nearly drowns out the drone of the heat lamp overhead.

The pajama shirt is a button down as well, and once he finds it it’s surprisingly easy to get it on over both arms, not really that different from putting a coat on. The buttons themselves, though, are smaller and more plentiful than they were on his other shirt, and buttoning with one hand turns out to be much more difficult than unbuttoning was. And Jared hasn’t taken it upon himself to leave yet.

“Hey, uh, could you help with the…” Once Evan starts speaking, Jared snaps his gaze away from the wall. “I know this is inconvenient, I thought this would be easier than a T-shirt since it doesn’t, I wouldn’t have to move my arms as much, but, uh, the buttons, they’re. They’re kind of a problem.”

After staring first at the buttons, then up at Evan, Jared slowly scrubs one hand across his face, now distinctly pink.

“You know what, never mind, I’m sorry —”

“No worries, bro.” Jared’s voice is rather strained. “Here to help. Just let me do it and then it’ll be done. And hold still.”

He steps nearer, taking the tails of Evan’s shirt in his hands, and starts buttoning from the bottom upwards. They’re standing so close that Evan would swear he feels a puff of warm air on his skin every time Jared exhales.

“So,” Evan says, casting about for some kind of small talk, anything to break the tension, “this bathroom is really. Purple.”

“Mom’s idea.” Jared is still focused on the buttons, squinting slightly. “She’s a big fan of lilac for some reason. God, these buttons are fucking minuscule, it’s no wonder you had trouble.”

“You can put your glasses back on if it would help.”

“For this? You might as well ask me to examine a delicate Victorian lady’s bare ankle up close.”

Jared makes the weirdest comparisons sometimes. “I don’t mind _that_ much.”

“Hey, I just don’t want to —”

Jared cuts himself off abruptly, at the same instant that a chill runs through Evan, and Jared must have reached for a button and missed because his hand is on Evan’s chest, directly over his sternum, fingertips just brushing his bare skin. Jared’s hand is cold, he’s always had cold hands, yet the bathroom suddenly feels stiflingly warm.

Evan dares to look at Jared and discovers that Jared is looking right back at him, speechless. His eyes are wide with what might or might not be fear, and he’s still pink in the face, lips barely parted. He hasn’t moved his hand yet, and Evan doesn’t blame him, as he probably couldn’t move or even break eye contact right now either, even if he wanted to.

Can Jared feel his heart beating? He must be able to tell that it’s speeding up.

They’re still staring at each other, a minute or an hour or a year later, not having spoken a word more. And maybe Evan’s still dreaming, though this is the farthest thing from a nightmare, but he thinks Jared is leaning toward him, just a fraction, and again he wonders _what if, just maybe, it could happen…_

Then Jared clears his throat and pulls his hand away, returning to buttoning the shirt like nothing’s happened.

They don’t attempt conversation again until Jared has finished with the buttons, at which point he takes a step back, awkwardly claps Evan on the right shoulder, and says “All set,” before leaving the bathroom and shutting the door behind him. His glasses are still on the vanity.

Is it worth trying to figure out what that was all about, if it was anything? Evan considers it for a moment.

But he really is tired, and Jared probably needs his glasses.

Evan picks them up carefully in his good hand, then realizes the problem with that when he needs to turn off the lights and get the door open, but he manages without breaking anything. (Well. Anything else.) When he gets to Jared’s room, the door is open, and Jared is sprawled face up on the bean bag under his window, right across from the doorway.  

“Hey, you, uh, left your glasses.” Evan holds them up, dangling from his hand, and Jared hurries to extract himself from the bean bag.

“Oh, shit, thanks. I thought everything was looking unusually blurry.” Jared plucks the glasses from Evan’s hand. “Although there’s really no point in putting them on now if we’re just going to bed.”

“Good point.” There’s an unrolled sleeping bag with two sad-looking pillows on it on the floor in the middle of the room, and Evan’s already bent down and started trying to fluff them up a bit when Jared asks from behind him, “What are you doing?”

Evan pauses. Jared just sounds confused. “Getting ready to sleep? These pillows are kind of flat.”

“Well, I’m sleeping there, not you, so don’t insult my pillows. The bed is for you.”

The room only has one bed and they both know it. “Your bed?”

“Yes, my bed.” Jared must see Evan’s reluctance in the slope of his back or the partially fluffed pillow still in his hand or some other minute detail that no one else would notice, because he adds, “Evan, I think breaking your arm gives you the right to sleep in a bed. One night on the floor won’t, like, destroy my spine.”

“I mean, if you’re sure…”

“Trust me, I am.”

Being told three times is enough for Evan. The bed’s not far from the sleeping bag, so there’s only a few steps for him between getting up from the floor and sinking gratefully onto the bed. “This is really soft.”

“Only the best for —”

“These pillows are flat too, though,” Evan interrupts. “How do you sleep on these?”

“Oh my God, what is it with the pillows?” Jared sighs as he places his glasses on the nightstand beside the bed, next to his phone. “There are two of them, that should be enough for anyone.”

“I mean, with these pillows, it just feels like I’m sleeping on the floor anyway.” After a moment’s consideration, Evan sits up and pulls his own phone out of his bag, checks it (no notifications), and puts it on the nightstand as well. “Or, like, a rock.”

“I’m not running a hotel here. Besides, I sleep on those every night, and I’m perfectly fine.” Jared reaches for the lamp on the nightstand, then stops short. “Can I turn this off now?”

“Yeah, sure,” Evan says, sliding underneath Jared’s sheets, settling onto the pillows, and trying not to think too hard about _I sleep on those every night._

There’s a click as the lamp turns off, then a soft shuffling noise, probably Jared getting adjusted in the sleeping bag.

“Good night, sweet prince,” Jared says dryly. “Wait, no. Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the Japanese beetles bite.”

“Should I be worried about there being Japanese beetles in your bed?”

“…Good night, Evan.”

“Good night to you too, Jared.”

Evan curls up on his side, sandwiches his good arm between the two pillows, and closes his eyes.

But he can hear Jared’s breathing get quiet and slow down, and he’s still awake. The pillows are so different from what he’s used to, as unimportant as Jared thought it was, and the bed is up against a wall instead of in the middle of the room like his is. And every time he starts to doze he remembers his nightmare again, and the fear of returning to that dream or a worse one, of finding that this has all been in his head, jolts him back from the edge of slumber.

Maybe he’ll have to wait it out until he’s too tired to possibly stay awake, no matter how frightened he is. Or just not sleep.

Evan shifts in the bed, vainly hoping that he’ll somehow find a position that will enable him to sleep. He tries to be quiet about it, but the springs beneath him creak when he moves, and from the floor he hears Jared’s breath hitch and start a new rhythm.  

Then there’s a louder creaking noise, accompanied by soft meowing, as Spaghetti jumps onto the bed without warning and settles on top of the covers between Evan’s legs and the wall. Jared makes a confused indistinct noise that definitely indicates he’s at least awake enough to complain about being awoken.

“Mmmph,” Jared says, and then a little more articulately, “You’re up.”

“Um. Spaghetti jumped on me.”

“Be gentle, Spaghetti, he’s an invalid.” Jared’s words are a little blurrier than usual. “She always gets clingy when people are ailing. Wouldn’t leave me alone when I had the flu.” Evan vaguely remembers that — some time early in high school, he’s sure. Jared had been missing for most of a week. “Let Evan get his beauty sleep.”

“I wasn’t really, though.” Compared to Jared’s soft mumbling, Evan’s speaking too loudly, too sharp. “Sleeping. I couldn’t.”

“Those pillows really got you, huh?” Evan doesn’t answer right away, somehow pulling Jared closer to full consciousness. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s just. Every time I try to sleep, I can’t. Because I think, what if I have a dream again? Like before?” Like an hour ago, like at the ER, like every time he’d convinced himself that Jared being there was just wishful thinking.

“Ah.” If only Evan could see Jared right now, could get a better idea of what he means by that single word. “You can wake me up if that happens. I’ll be here, I won’t care.”

“Okay.”

“Would the calm down playlist help?”

It might just remind him of how long he’d had to wait before being treated, trying to ignore the pain in his arm and the knot in his stomach, but it’s worth a try. “Maybe.”

There’s a series of clattering and fumbling noises, along with Jared briefly swearing at the brightness of his phone screen in the dark, before the playlist starts. Then gentle strumming permeates the room, drowning everything else out.

It turns out the familiarity of the playlist is almost as soothing as the music itself; Jared rarely uses the shuffle button, and this particular playlist is well-worn. Evan manages to drift off at last with Jared’s reassurance in mind, Spaghetti’s warm, solid presence near his feet, and a gentle affirmation in his ears, _rest in my arms, sleep in my bed, there’s a design…_

* * *

The second time Evan wakes up, the music has stopped, and he’s not exactly sure why he’s awake, but he thinks someone might have called his name.

It’s mostly dark inside and out, but there must be a streetlamp on outside, because Evan can just see Jared sitting up on the floor, faintly silhouetted in sodium orange, one hand on his chest.

“Is something wrong?” Evan whispers, though there’s nobody else around he would disturb by speaking at a normal volume. Jared’s head turns toward him almost instantly.

“Evan?” Jared whispers back.

“Yeah. Did something happen?”

Jared doesn’t move or speak for a long moment, just looking at him in the dark. Then he slowly lies back down and says, “No. Go back to sleep.”

Evan slides toward the edge of the bed, going to turn on the lamp. “Are you sure?”

“Please just go back to sleep, Evan,” Jared repeats, and if Evan were more awake he might try to figure out why Jared sounds like he’s choking, but it’s an effort just to keep his eyes open, and Jared is telling him to sleep anyway.

So he falls back asleep, and doesn’t dream.

* * *

When Evan wakes up for the final time, all the lights are off in the room, but weak sunlight is creeping in through the uncovered window.

He lies still for several minutes, gradually remembering everything that happened yesterday and blinking away sleep. It’s only when he recalls that he’s in Jared’s room — in Jared’s bed — that it occurs to him to wonder if Jared’s awake as well.

Pushing himself up with one arm, Evan shifts to sit on the edge of Jared’s bed and turns on the nightstand lamp, brightening up the room enough to show that the sleeping bag in the middle of the floor is empty. And that there’s a scribbled-on sticky note on the stack of pillows on the floor, which he scrambles out of bed to pick up and read. (“Scrambles” is an exaggeration, maybe, but it sure feels hasty to him.)

_Went outside around 5:45. Don’t worry, I’m not leaving the property._

No signature, but it doesn’t really need one.

Evan checks his phone, still next to Jared’s. It’s just after six in the morning. He probably couldn’t get back to sleep if he tried.

He sets his phone back down, steps carefully between the sleeping bag and bed, and leaves the bedroom, pulling the door almost shut behind him — Jared must have left it open. Then it’s through the short hallway, past the bathroom, and down the stairs, one at a time, leaning on the right hand railing. Spaghetti is nowhere in sight.

Evan moves closer to the front door, peering through the window set into it, and is surprised to see Jared right there, sitting on the front steps.

Jared looks over his shoulder at the sound of Evan opening the door, then goes back to watching the horizon, where the sun hasn’t quite come up yet, as Evan crosses the porch and sits down at Jared’s left, setting his splinted arm gingerly in his lap. “I’m surprised you’re awake. Thought you’d sleep all morning and I’d have to drag you out of my bed before your mom hunted me down.”

“I don’t think you could, though.”

“Touché.”

Evan shifts a little on the steps. The concrete is cold, especially since he’s still in pajamas and bare feet, and it’s a cool morning. “You’re awake, too. Before me.”

Jared yawns — he’s also still in the clothes he slept in, Evan notices, and there are dark circles under his eyes. “I have to go to work, unfortunately. No rest for the wicked.”

“Couldn’t you just ask for a day off?”

“A day off? For me, the lowly intern? Unlikely.”

“I mean, you’ll never know if you don’t try,” Evan says, sliding a little closer to Jared.

“True.” Jared examines his own left hand, fingers splayed out on the step he’s sitting on. “I was planning on taking you home on my way in.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of them says anything for a moment.

“So what are you doing out here?” Evan asks finally. “Instead of sleeping longer.”

“I asked myself the same question,” Jared says, deadpan. “Enjoying the view, I suppose. Thinking.”

“…About?”

Jared waves a hand vaguely in the air. “The universe. Life. Stuff like that.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“Oh, hush, you,” Jared says, flicking the same hand in Evan’s direction with supposed disdain. He goes to set it back down on the step, and almost without thinking, Evan reaches out and takes it in his own.

Jared goes still, stopped mid breath, and glances first down at their hands, then up at Evan’s face, just as he had in the bathroom. Evan’s convinced he’s done something wrong, that he’s somehow managed to misread Jared entirely. Until Jared relaxes slightly, interlacing his fingers with Evan’s own, and breathes again.

“I’m glad you were there,” Evan says, staring out at the sky. Their joined hands hang between them. “I don’t know what would’ve happened, what I would have done, if you hadn’t…” He doesn’t complete the thought, but he knows he doesn’t need to.

Jared squeezes Evan’s hand. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too.”

They watch the sunrise, purple, pink, and orange overtaking the boundless blue, hand in hand, the beginning of a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Kudos and comments are great things, and if AO3 comment boxes just don't allow you enough freedom of expression, I'm also on Tumblr @nothingunrealistic.


End file.
